Sunday, March 19, 2017

The Trial of Daddy Warpig

SCENE: A gray morning
in Paris. Smoke rises from the wreckage of the Bastille and the Governor’s
palace. A COURT has been set up in the main plaza, with planks set on barrels
forming the benches. To the side a guillotine has been erected, by which an
EXECUTIONER glowers. Surrounding is a horde of angry PEASANTS in rustic,
picturesque clothing, clutching farm tools. At the center of the court, sitting
on a fine velvet chair raised on a platform of cobblestones, sits the JUDGE, played
by Jesse Lucas in a powdered wig. To the JUDGE’S left sits the DEFENSE ATTORNEY,
played by JESSE LUCAS in a ragged officer’s uniform, chewing on a licorice-filled cheroot. To the right sits the PROSECUTOR, a disheveled aristocrat with an
off-centered ascot, also played by JESSE LUCAS.

Enter BAILIFF.

BAILIFF: Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! May it please the Court and the
Revolutionary Council that charges are to be brought against one DADDY WARPIG, also known as JASYN JONES, that said Mr. WARPIG has
engaged in acts of treason against
the Pulp Revolution, by knowingly and in violation of honored statute engaging
in foul practices of declaring those who
are having fun to be wrong, and by leading
the public to believe that such are the acts of true Pulp Revolutionaries,
by repeatedly and wrongfully declaring hard
science fiction and its readers and proponents to be enemies of the revolution, thus casting out the very fans the
Revolution was engendered to protect. Mr.

PROSECUTOR, do you recognize these
charges as those you are sworn to determine the truth of, before the JUDGE, the
PEOPLE, the STATE, and ALMIGHTY GOD?

PROSECUTOR, closing a
hand mirror: I do.

BAILIFF: And you, the DEFENSE, do you also recognize these
charges on the same terms?

DEFENSE, sighing:
Yes.

BAILIFF: Mr. WARPIG, how do you plea?

DEFENSE: He isn’t here.

The CROWD gasps.

DEFENSE: He’s more important than us, you know. He has a
much bigger blog, ten thousand Twitter followers, and regular Castalia
articles. We’ve just been featured on Sensor Sweep a couple of times.

The CROWD jeers.
Someone throws a tomato. The DEFENSE ATTORNEY dodges, and begins to

clean his
fingers with a knife.

BAILIFF: Will you enter a plea on his behalf?

DEFENSE: Yes, of course. NOT GUILTY.

Someone in the CROWD
screams and faints. Angry hoots and shouts arise. The BAILIFF raps the bench
with his truncheon until the CROWD quiets.

The BAILIFF is seated.

JUDGE: The attorneys may present their cases.

The Prosecutor rises.

PROSECUTOR, pacing
before the bench:The PROSECUTION
has found, and will present, evidence, that Mr. Warpig has repeatedly placed
himself in the position of an arbiter of fun, against the will of the
Revolutionary Council, by presenting these articles (he waves a sheaf of paper) before the public on the Castalia House
blog, and by repeatedly defending the treasonous positions therein on the
comments section of that and other websites; the main argument being, that the
science fiction known as “hard SF,” “Blue SF,” or “Men with Screwdrivers,” is
not fun, and that it stifled and stifles the more fun Pulp style of fantasy and
science fiction; that the distinction between hard and not-hard SF is
meaningless; that “hard SF” remains the standard of true or righteous science
fiction among the mainstream, preventing Pulp authors from rising to prominence
due to their lack of scientific rigor; that distinctions between fictional
genres at all are unnatural and unnecessary. This is prima facie evidence that
Mr. WARPIG is opposed to several founding Pulp Revolutionary principles, to
wit, that we do not care what other people like, and that we do not place
ourselves in the position of inquisitors of other peoples’ fun.

Someone in the CROWD
cheers. The DEFENSE shifts uncomfortably.

PROSECUTOR, continuing:
Therefore, Your Honor, there can be no decision, other than that Mr. WARPIG
be found guilty of high treason, and symbolically executed on yonder symbolic
guillotine, and be no longer considered a proponent of the Pulp Revolution at
all.

Scattered clapping in
the CROWD. The PROSECUTOR is seated.

DEFENSE, leaning
forward in his seat: The prosecution fails to make his case on three
points. First, my client has not told anyone how they should have fun. That’s
ludicrous on its face. Daddy Warpig is a GamerGate veteran. He knows exactly
what it’s like to be told you’re doing your hobby wrong. The articles my
associate has presented do not show my client being critical of hard SF or blue
SF fans. He’s critical of their authors.

Scattered mutterings
in the CROWD. The PROSECUTOR folds his arms, a frozen smile on his face.

DEFENSE, raising a
second finger: Second, that my client has a point. Campbell didn’t like the
pulps. He liked rationality. He didn’t want Romantic adventure and primal
forces, he wanted Modernist humanism and scientific reasoning. The dudes that
came after him were even worse. Knight and Blish and Moorcock went against
everything this Revolution stands for. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t even
need a revolution. We wouldn’t have
forgotten Burroughs, Brackett, and Merritt. Del Rey would have reprinted
classic fantasy instead of raising Terry Brooks as the fantasy Antichrist. Baen
would have been one of many. Correia would never have had to self-publish. Pink
SF could never have gained any power. This needs to be said.

DEFENSE, continuing:
Third, that this court doesn’t even have any power. My client is bigger than
us, and everyone that you could really call leaders of the Pulp Revolution
stands with him. Cirsova has come out and said that hard SF doesn’t exist at
all. Jeffro himself stands with my client. What do we contribute? Twenty-five
hundred clicks in two months? Half a novella that we’re totally going to finish
soon? All we can accomplish is to read ourselves out of the movement. Someone
will start chanting “we don’t care” whenever we show up in comments sections,
Vox Day will declare us a cuck, and it’ll be over. Our list of Traits aren’t
legally binding, they’re suggestions. Who are we to tell Daddy Warpig how to
have fun?

The CROWD is in
uproar. The ring of SOLDIERS around the court shoves them back with their rifles.
The EXECUTIONER shifts uncomfortably.

BAILIFF: Order! Order!

PROSECUTOR: My dear colleague, have you forgotten the
charges? Mr. Warpig is not guilty of blasphemy against twentieth-century
science fiction critics; he is guilty of crimes against the revolution itself.

The PROSECUTOR rises
again, and advances to the DEFENSE’S bench.

PROSECUTOR: Can you deny that the atmosphere is now tense,
charged, full of division? Can you argue that the comments section at Castalia
House, once the cheerful soul of the Revolution, are now a blackened and
charred warzone? That the elements of snobbery and disunity that in the
Appendix N days were nowhere to be found now dominate? And whose fault is that?

He turns to the CROWD.

PROSECUTOR: Is it Cirsova’s? Is it Jeffro’s?

CROWD: NO!

PROSECUTOR: Is it Nyanzi or Mollison or Fear or the Bushis
or any of the neutrals?

CROWD: NO!

The CROWD pushes
against the ring of SOLDIERS. Several of them discharge their rifles in the
air.

BAILIFF: ORDER! ORDER I SAY!

PROSECUTOR (shouting):
NO! The enemy of the unity of the
Revolution, the one who summoned Vox Day and the Dread Ilk to the sacred halls
of Pulp Reverence and Fun, who challenged the life’s work of no less a luminary
than JOHN C. WRIGHT, who sought to
transform the Revolution into a SINGLE-ISSUE
MOVEMENT dominated by PURITY
SPIRALING and RIGHT-WING VIRTUE
SIGNALING, is none other than DADDY
WARPIGHIMSELF! On charges of
sedition, corruption of the youth of Athens, misuse of the #Pulprev brand, and
of filling the whole Earth with violence, the defendant is GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!

The CROWD breaks
through the SOLDIERS. A group tackles and disarms the BAILIFF. The DEFENSE
stands on his bench and draws his sword. The Prosecutor leans back smiling into
the arms of a group of PEASANTS. The words, “To Be Continued” appear onscreen. Roll credits.